Tuesday night, the Madison City Council adopted a smoking ban by a 15-5 vote. The citywide ordinance adds Madison to a list already including New York City, California and Ireland as principalities with a ban on smoking in restaurants, bars and many other places of business. With strong support from interest groups such as Teens Against Tobacco Use and Smoke Free Madison, this progressive edict will snuff out smoking in nearly all city workplaces — including bars — effective July 2005.

This board has praised the City Council on numerous occasions for making attempts to improve the living and working conditions in Madison. But the adoption of a smoking ban crushes the rights of bar owners to run their establishments with their own discretion. A bar owner must have the right to allow legal activities in his or her place of business. Smoking is most certainly a legal activity, and the allowance of such a pastime should be left to the discretion of business owners.

Thousands of studies have found smoking tobacco to be a detriment to one’s health. Secondhand smoke, very common in bars, also can have very negative physical effects. Consuming alcohol is equally, if not a more detrimental behavior. Quite simply, one does not go to a bar with credence the establishment will be a bastion of healthy living. Getting rid of smoke in bars and restaurants does not make them so.

Alternatives to the smoky Madison bar scene do exist. Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry and Crave are both establishments that prohibit smoking by the choice of the owner, and a market exists for such establishments. No one is required to go to a bar filled with smoke. No one is required to work where smoking is allowed. This city and this country have been established on freedom of personal choice. Tuesday, the Madison City Council impeded this right. In approving the smoking ban, this city moved in a direction that is nothing if not supremely un-American.